What do you think about Taiwanese student?

[gjo3fm06]

As the subject, what do you think about Taiwanese student compare to the students from your hometown?

Are they learning new Language (here means English) as fast as the students from your hometown?

[TaiwanVisitor12321]

As the subject, what do you think about Taiwanese student compare to the students from your hometown?

Are they learning new Language (here means English) as fast as the students from your hometown?

No, because they are afraid to talk or practice in class. American students are expected to speak often and practice what they learn, they don't only pass a test.

They are afraid to make mistakes.

They are afraid to ask the teacher questions. My students whisper to each other when they don't understand something, but they're afraid to ask me. This is rude and disrupts my class because it causes people to stop listening to me, but they don't care.

They are afraid. Be brave and try harder. Listen in class. Speak when you know something.

American students also usually study a language because they are interested in it and have a passion for learning. Here, nobody cares about English at all. Nobody practices outside of class like I ask, nobody cares about the topics, nobody CARES, so they don't have much motivation to learn.

Also, many Taiwanese students are lazy. They go to class and sit there and do nothing. They think they study hard because they go to a lot of classes, but they don't do anything useful in the class. They don't participate, and a lot of them don't even listen to the teacher.

Most of my students don't even know how to answer "how are you?" properly with any answer other than "fine". They will answer if I use Chinglish and ask them "Did you eat lunch?", but in an English speaking country nobody will understand this. As soon as I explain that they shouldn't say "Did you eat lunch?" in English, they stop listening to me, which I feel is because they don't care about my culture.

[superking]

My students at Hua Hsing were unbelievably incredible students. They could absorb English as fast as I could teach them. They were creative, energetic, polite, enthusiastic, friendly, hard working, punctual and dedicated. I was always amazed at their ability to pass my tests, do what was required of them AND more, and never complain about it. I had some of them come to stay with my family in the UK recently and their English was still practically flawless despite their protestations to the contrary. My parents fell in love with their gentle natures and enthusiasm for learning and exploring.

[NonTocareLeTete]

Most of my students don't even know how to answer "how are you?" properly with any answer other than "fine". They will answer if I use Chinglish and ask them "Did you eat lunch?", but in an English speaking country nobody will understand this. As soon as I explain that they shouldn't say "Did you eat lunch?" in English, they stop listening to me, which I feel is because they don't care about my culture.

Is somebody a little grumpy because he didn't eat his lunch?
They don't know how to answer "How are you?"
You're their teacher, teach it! I begin every class with a segment I call "Small Talk." I write a greeting question on the board (What's up? How you doing? What have you been up to? Any plans for the weekend? How's your week been so far?) and then I write the roots of a possible answer (Not much, I've just been____, I'm doing great, today I _____, I've been so busy lately, I've been_______, Yeah, I can't wait, tomorrow I'm going to________, Exhausting, I've been ________) then I model an appropriate answer. I tell them that if they really don't want to talk, they can say "Pretty good, how about you?" I tell them that when I ask them a greeting question in English, it's not like Ni hao, where you don't really give any information back. English greeting questions are an invitation to talk, unless you're passing each other going opposite directions. I tell them it's like I just tossed them a ball, and if they don't give me a good answer, they dropped the ball. If they answer, but don't ask me back, it's like they caught the ball and just kept it, which is really quite rude in my culture. I've brought a ball to class to demonstrate for really hard cases.
As with SuperKing, my students are delightful. I'm going to guess yours are nice people as well, TaiwanStudent, but unwittingly you've set up a dynamic in class that shuts them down. Like it or not, it's your job to fix it.
Or, you know, if you prefer, just go on thinking that students in Taiwan are lazy, useless, rude and boring. I'm throwing in an extra eye roll for good measure

Gjo, to answer your question, I think they're probably as good or as bad as my hometown, but TaiwanStudent was spot on about the shyness/lack of desire to talk in class thing. With guidance, they get over it.
Also, in America (where I come from), only a small percentage of the population is trying to learn another language- as TaiwanStudent said, just the one's who have the desire- desire will make them learn faster.

[archylgp]

You're their teacher, teach it! I begin every class with a segment I call "Small Talk."

I use to do that when I taught...it works sometimes, but if someone can't answer how are you after studying English for 15 years (!!), there's not much a teacher can do to turn things around...

[tomthorne]

They do extremely well considering the situation they are in and the often idiotic way they are taught English by both Taiwanese and NES teachers. I like them a lot (adults, not kids - although to be honest the kids are pretty good too). If I didn't like them, I wouldn't teach them. That would be plain daft.

[NonTocareLeTete]

I use to do that when I taught...it works sometimes, but if someone can't answer how are you after studying English for 15 years (!!), there's not much a teacher can do to turn things around...

Really, I think it's because nobody has ever sat down with them and explained the appropriate way to answer (beyond "I'm fine thank you how are you?") It's funny the things that slip through the cracks. And, English is taught by rote here, with very little natural conversation- if they do get natural conversation, it's usually on a prescribed topic that the teacher brings up, not the normal shit we usually say every day.
After a week of Small Talk class openers, pretty much any student I teach is a champ at answering greeting questions. An important distinction I make for them is that "How" questions are usually answered with adjectives and feelings, and "what" questions are usually answered with descriptions of events, activities and verbs.
I've seen a little bit of resistance from students who think it's too 'simple.' To get beyond that, I ask them how long they've been studying English. Then I ask them if they ever feel awkward when meeting a foreigner in an informal situation, or if they ever hear two foreigners talking to each other and have no idea what they're talking about. Then I explain that I often encounter TAiwanese people with excellent English and I ask them some sort of greeting question and they answer it but then they never ask me about myself. I make a big deal of acting all astonished, like "That's so rude! I totally care about them but they don't care about me at all!" Then I explain that small talk makes up like 80% of communication (probably an exaggeration) and that if they're ever going to use English for business, school or social events, they'll need small talk. By the end of that speech, resistance has disappeared and they'll give it a go.
I also hand out cards at the beginning of a topic that say "Question" or "Comment" because a lot of students seem to think that they don't have to formulate any opinions or say anything novel (other than answering my questions) about what we're discussing in class. When they have that card in front of them, they know what their job is. It takes the burden off me. It gets a good discussion going. And after a while, we no longer need those cards.
It's all about setting up an expectation and staying consistent. Then when a new student comes in, they naturally go with the flow. If they're the kind of student who wants to sit by passively, they don't last long in my class. I've only lost 1 or 2 though. The rest seem to get that "Oh, this is what I've been missing in my English education!"
Anyways, it's 9:30 on a Friday night. Time for me to get to my own 'small talk'

[TaiwanVisitor12321]

I've had pretty similar conversations (one sided) with my class about most of the same things you've been explaining, NonTocareLeTete, but it doesn't sink in. They don't respond or react unless it's to give me some dumb comment like "well, I just come here for free air conditioning, I don't need to worry about that!" or even "I've studied English for 20 years so I can't change". Another student once told me "if you just explain the vocabulary and let us read we will be satisfied." when I tried to get them going at the beginning of class. They just think anything outside the day's material is "chatting", and "chatting" means wasting time to them. I've explained it to them in terms of business, in terms of just being able to have a conversation with people... really a lot like how you described, but they just don't care about it. I've explained "How are you?", I've explained that it's an open invitation to speak, that it's their job to answer... I gave them examples...

Sometimes new students ask "can we start the class?" if I have a conversation going with the students. Most times, the other students will clam up and refuse to keep talking. They just follow the person that spoke up. The last time that happened they actually backed me up and told the newbie that we DID start the class already. The new person was involved in the conversation, she just thought it was a waste of time since we weren't reading the article yet, and that's the REAL class. She never came back.

Usually I get 15-20 minutes of conversation out of them if I'm lucky, then I transition over to their precious article, where they proceed to ignore 75% of what I say and not answer my questions, but that's the part they like. They think I explain the vocab well, give them good examples, teach them how to use the word well, etc.. They usually only care about their own questions though. I'll explain a word, write it on the board, with an example sentence and synonyms and personal stories, then I'll get "excuse me, what does (the word I just went over) mean?". Try fucking paying attention to class and you'd know? Nobody will laugh at them in this situation.

Your activities look absolutely wonderful to me, actually. It's almost exactly what I'd like to do if I could get them to play along.

The times I've done similar things were met with dead silence, or active resistance, or just the above comments. I think generally the problem is that most of the students are afraid of the talkative few, and would never dare to pipe up to agree with me if a louder person has already disagreed.

Recently a student kept interrupting me when I was trying to talk, and ignored me when I asked her to knock it off (she actually has a personality and is really playful in class, but it can get childish and distracting at times) so another student (an older lady that interrupts me CONSTANTLY herself) told her to shut up and listen in Chinese. The girl apologized to her in Chinese, and was quiet the rest of the class. After class she told me that she hates that lady and doesn't blame me since I couldn't understand the rude comment since it was in Chinese, but she never wants to come to a class with the other lady again. They just cow to the strongest voice in the room, but don't respect mine. If I can get a nice student to tell everyone else to talk to me, they usually will. If I tell them, nothing happens.

Several students brought me little gifts today, and more during the week, so I mean it's not like NOBODY appreciates me, but the majority just don't want to play along, and I really need to get all that dead weight alive and doing something in class.

I'm trying to figure out some way to regulate student output and make it more clear that I'm the one running the show. If that works I think I can get some activities going again. Some students have said that I'm too nice, so that makes them lazy. My Taiwanese girlfriend says I need to basically treat them like shit because they need someone to tell them what to do all the time, because they won't respect friendliness. She also thinks I should just teach grammar and let them be silent because it's what they expect. She doesn't think that's a good class, but she thinks I shouldn't care about them so much, it's just a job. I have to imagine there's some middle ground there though. My classes will fill up with high school kids for the summer pretty soon, so I think it's as good a time as any to try rocking the boat again.

[NonTocareLeTete]

Yeah, that's rough when there's a certain prevailing attitude in the class and all of the students are going along with it.
Hate to always be giving advice, but here's what I'd do:
A.) Learn all of their names- have a nametag (folded index card works well) with your name on it, and put it in front of you during class. Hand out index cards to all of the students and have them do the same. At the beginning of each class, ceremoniously bust out your nametag, and redistribute index cards to all of the students who forgot their's. People respond much better when you say "Hey, Shirley, how was your weekend?" then they do to "Hey, you with the black hair! How was your weekend?"
B.) If you really want to chat some, chat at a specified time (beginning, middle, end) of EVERY class, make EVERY student speak, and they will get into the routine.
C.) Try writing a schedule on the board at the beginning of class so they know what's coming. Mine usually looks something like this:
1.) Small Talk (Ooh, now it's not just chatting and wasting time. It has an official name and it's serious business!)
2.) Listening Comprehension - I load up a Breaking News English 2 minute news cast. I explain it's because my accent is American and it's in their best interest to get used to a British accent as well. REally, sometimes it's so I can take a rest. While the newscast is playing, I quickly scribble comprehension questions on the board, ex: "How old was the lady who punched a guy on the plane? How many months will she go to jail?" Then, after it plays, we test their comprehension by answering the questions. If they didn't get a lot of them, we play it again, and I point to a question when the answer is coming. Then we discuss the newscast. (question/comment cards are helpful here.) This will also help you get a better idea of their level/whether or not they can actually understand you.
3.) Read
4.) Current Events - I explain that I can't understand Chinese and when I went into the 85 degrees to get coffee this morning I saw a news report in which a man with a face mask was bowing, sobbing, and apologizing profusely to a woman in a hospital bed. Why was he doing that? What did the man do? What else is going on in Taiwan? (International reporting is really dismal here, so often I'll explain one of the big international stories, for example we discussed the slaughter in Syria during my last class.)

D.) Try going around in a circle to get them to answer questions, or do the old "Spin the pen" and whoever the cap is pointing at has to answer. This is lovely because you can spin it, ask, then pass it to the student who answered, then they spin it and ask the next student, and low and behold, the onus to keep the discussion going is no longer on you. And, it's not your fault if the damn pen points to a shy student, it's the damn pen's fault. (I've also made a show of throwing it out the window when it pointed to someone who didn't want to talk, but that's a different story. Laughter helps ease the tension too.)
If a student doesn't answer, make a big show of going up to the board and creating some 'scaffolding' for them to answer, acting embarrassed that you, the TEACHER forgot to TEACH. Write a sentence structure they can use, and if they're really shy, just leave a couple of spaces for them to fill in adjectives. "My weekend was _______, I went to ______ with my ______. We had a ______ time." Then model it for them.
This serves a dual purpose- 1, it really is useful even for advanced students to see, word for word, how a native speaker might answer and 2, it shows the silent student "Hey, I mean business. If you sit there silently, I am going to assume your English is terrible and I'm going to teach you how to respond. This will be embarrassing so next time you'll just use the skills you have and ANSWER.
If they still don't talk, I launch into my "It's better to make a mistake in here, in this classroom, then out there, where people might laugh at you. If somebody here laughs at you, I will throw this eraser at their face and that's really going to hurt. Nobody here is allowed to laugh at you. But what if you meet a REALLY HANDSOME FOREIGNER and he wants to know how your weekend was and YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO ANSWER and really he's the LOVE OF YOUR LIFE and you were going to have GET MARRIED AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER but now you never will..." This works equally well with old women as young college students. But the point is, this is a classroom, this is where you are allowed to make mistakes.
E.) Do some work on your own thoughts. If you think poorly of your students, it's going to come out in your mannerisms, your attitude, your facial expressions. Imagine if you were trying to speak a foreign language and the person you were talking to was looking at you like "Listening to you is such a pain in my ass." You probably wouldn't want to talk either, and they have an audience of their peers listening to this too. Even if you hide it well they will still feel your attitude toward them. So think happy thoughts! At least you're not teaching kids

[headhonchoII]

Damn, your classes blow away any of my former Chinese classes by about 100x!